Gothic 3 Editor

February 12th, 2007, 03:45

I recall having read somewhere - perhaps even here, as a guest - that Piranha Bytes had promised an editor for the game (much like the downloadable toolset that came with Oblivion), but later rescinded their comments, citing some conflict with the engine (or something) that prevented them from releasing anything that could possibly affect it to the public.
Could someone elaborate on this? Or amend it as necessary?

Frankly, the more I consider the idea of a Gothic 3 editor (having just finished Gothic 2 a few months ago, and immediately moving on to make a few forays into the world of G3), the greater the benefits from such a program appear.
Take Oblivion and the TES Toolset for instance. Having read over most of the threads here at the Watch, I feel safe enough saying that the general consensus in regards to vanilla Oblivion is this: it sucks. Honestly, I agree. Straight out of the box, Oblivion is nothing more than eye-candy, whose storyline degrades ten minutes into it as you watch the promises BethSoft falter before you…however, take a moment to grab some of the thousands of spectacular mods that exist for such (modifying everything from the levelled items issues, terrrible/lack of competent AI, console-based UI, and a slue of other issues) and suddenly the game is granted both longevity and value.
After first obtaining my copy of Oblivion, I attempted to play it and, like many, was dazzled by the graphics…for about two hours. After reaching the second city, running through more mundane tasks, and finding out that each dungeon was exactly like every other (the whole "levelled' thing), I was frustrated. However, after downloading the editor and taking some time to write up a mod of my own that addressed the levelled items/monsters oversight, the entire game was revolutionized. From there, a quick perusal of some popular TES modding sites netted me everything from must-have mods (UI and AI fixes, texture revamps, etectera) to some awe-inspiring gameplay (better thieving, improved sneaking, realistic archery, redux of the skill system, new quests, monsters, and items, ability to drop quest objects, put keys on a key-chain, remove the quick-travel feature, four speeds for the horse and horse-mounted archery, no more compass, etcetera) and esthetic modules (improved pallette, higher resolution textures, redone monster models, new non-freaky faces and hair, windows that are lit from the inside at night, new moons and stars, etcetera).
It is a well known fact that the presence of a strong modding community can extend the lifespan of a game indefinetly. Gamers continue to mod Doom, for crying out loud, and the success of NWN is due (undebately) to the enormous amount of mods for such. The TES, GTA, and Half-Life series have also garnered a tremendous fan-base gained solely as a result of their ability to be modified…so why hasn't Piranha Bytes picked up the ball on this one?

At present, Gothic 3 is well-nigh unplayable on many peoples machines. I myself, with only one gigabyte of RAM, get to enjoy laborious loading-times and almost constant stutter. While these issues may not be amendable by modders (although, who am I to say), there is no end to the amount of tasks a dedicated mod-producer could set to in regards to G3, both to the improve the game functionally and esthetically. After all, some of the very things PB intended to be in the game might very well cause problems on certain individuals computers, and, much like in Oblivion, these could be changed by modders (the inability to play the game on older computers, even those meeting the minimum requirements, for instance; again, citing Oblivion, the Oldblivion mod made it possible to play OB on older comps, so what is to prevent the same being done for G3). Furthermore, actual issues regarding the game would likely be resolved sooner with hundreds of people working on the game around the world, as opposed to a small group of developers.
Personally, I would love to get my hands on an editor for Gothic 3. Even with my rather fractured experience with said title, I am overwhelmed by the potential this game has. I'd be overjoyed if I had the opportunity to throw in some new weapon designs (and change the name for some of the current ones), spells, characters, monsters, quests, locations, and all manner of other things.
So, is there any hope?

If YES:
* What news is there in regards to a release for the editor?

If NO:
* Is there any interest in starting a petition to have such a program released?

From memory, and Gorath can/will correct me if I'm wrong, an editor was planned, but with all the problems the devs are faced with fixing bugs and other issues, the idea has been shelved until such time as all the work is completed and they have time to produce one that the general public could use!!

I have assumed from the outset that it was a prime intention of Bethesda to promote a fan-base enlargement situation, as a large loyal fan-base is then primed fodder (financially speaking) for further game releases add-ons etc'….obviously an editor or tool-set set is a main factor contributing utility to this goal.

A quality and easy learning curve editor for G3 issued as a downloadable freebie to the loyal fans would maybe theoretically 'rope in' some of the bum-steers and mavericks that have gone astray from the fold…..but there again, maybe it's a little late as the initial momentum appears to have lilted….a probably irretrievable situation considering the bugs and hardware demanding problems.

I wonder how easy it would be to release an easy to use editor for G3. I'm not game developer, so I'm most certainly mistaken, but it seems to me to be much easier to have a editor for NWN and NWN2 than for Gothic type of games.

I read that currently they have no complete editing suite that they can release. That is, they used several proprietary commercial products that are very pricey. I'm not talking about 3D Studio Max or something, but certain applications for resource management I think they used. For their own tools (that plug in to them) to be of any use, some replacement will have to be found for them, or you will miss a significant part of the tools they used.

Ah, here is the relevant part from that translated Christmas interview:

What about an editor ?

KaiRo:

Our Genome-Editor is an allround-solution which is able to cope with every game data. Only the 3D geometry itself is created with external tools like 3DS Max. Our Editor is coalesced with a so-called Asset-Management-Tool named Perforce which channels and structurises all data stream. This is not our programm and it costs quite a lump of money. Releasing the editor in its current state would mean either you having to buy Perforce or alternatively having to accept that many features of it won't work. Long speech short sense: Many work has to be put into the Genome-Editor to separate him from his Siamese twin Perforce without it being perished.

But now we got the following problem: Our time is engaged by four projects now: Finishing Gothic 3, working on the Editor, planning future projects and restructurising the company itself. Since we can't divide ourselves into four parts we need to prioritise. And on top of that list is still the first point, finishing the game.

Perforce, aye?
Thank you for the information, Tauren, I was under the impression that was the situation (hence my comments about some conflict with the engine).
Is this the program they're talking about?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perforce

Originally Posted by Danicek
I wonder how easy it would be to release an easy to use editor for G3. I'm not game developer, so I'm most certainly mistaken, but it seems to me to be much easier to have a editor for NWN and NWN2 than for Gothic type of games.

It's not much more difficult. In fact it's pretty much the same. The differences between NWN2 and Gothic are not really as big as you might think.The main question is if G3 was build to be expanded later on and to what extent. MWN1 and NWN2 were build with such aspects in mind - not sure about G3. It's really a question of how much of G3 is hardcoded… because that is usually the stuff that is very hard to change (if not impossible).

Strange… maybe they're talking about Perforce Server then. Wouldn't be so unimaginable, since they probably worked in groups on these assets. I bet they were referring to a version of Perforce you can't readily download, like an Enterprise version type of product.

Then again, you'd only need a one user license for personal use which seems to be a free download. Maybe it was a custom dev job. Of course, only the evaluation version is available for free download.